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 Log entries The tower    {{found}} 2x {{not_found}} 0x {{log_note}} 0x  

4897 2018-12-06 22:55 recommendation Amberel (user activity610) - Found it

This has been hovering near the top of my "must do" list for a while now, and today I came up here with Simon of SimonDaynaFrank to tackle it. We set off from the car in rain, reached GZ and formulated a plan.

My first throw was right over the middle, a beauty - at least, for a long time we thought it was. But the line kept jamming completely solid as we tried to pull the rope over. So we reversed the line, but it still stuck just as bad. Oddly, it felt like it was sticking in the middle, and we couldn't imagine what it was snagging on.

With it well and truly stuck we used a completely different technique to place a second line, and this one was OK. Round about now the rain stopped, right at the time the Met Office forecast it would:-).

Simon went up first. I was expecting him to release the stuck line for me to tidy up before I ascended, but no, he said I had to come and see it for myself:-).

Getting over the edge was a bit of a struggle for my creaky old bones, but soon I was standing on the top with Simon.

My throw had indeed been perfectly over the middle - so perfectly that it had passed less than half an inch from the central flagpole - and over the small cleat on the side of the pole, which is what had caused the problem!

Well, we were up here now, and after a commemorative photo of the line passing over the cleat, we dropped that down to the ground, out of the way.

Up #1 done, and the down was easy enough. Just up #2. We had placed the rope before descending, so it was just a matter of shimmying up to the cache.

Ha -"just". Getting up, easy. Getting across, less so;-)- I'd taken up my lanyard but there was so much slack in the prusic that I couldn't take it in as far as I wanted to. Getting down, a bit of a struggle - the rope was soaked from the rain and the wet ground, and wouldn't slide through the GriGri.

But eventually I was back on the ground with the log in my hand, and with it signed and sealed it was Simon to put it back. I think it was probably harder to return it than it had been to fetch it, and even Simon, whos skills I am in awe of, struggled a bit. And he then had a real nightmare getting down on the wet rope.

With the rope back over the outside of the tower I went down. Every time we used the rope it got more and more awkward, and this time it was like watching a squegee as the water came out of the rope when it passed through the GriGri. Descent was a series of short but very sharp drops, really quite an alarming and unpleasant way to do it, so once on the ground I passed up a dry rope for Simon to descend on.

Both very pleased to have succeeded here as one way and another we made quite hard work of it :-). A challenging placement and well worthy of the TOP CACHE geocoin (visit link for details) that was pretty much ordained due to its reputation before we even got here:-).

Thanks for a great cache,

Rgds, Andy